As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
A recognized problem in the industry occurs in two socket servers in which network or storage input/output (I/O) devices connected to one processor are more slowly accessed by the second processor in the system. Inter-socket connections are often used for memory accesses on one or more neighboring processors and their associated peripherals, leading to what is known as the (non-uniform memory access) NUMA problem. Often the problem is not purely a bandwidth concern on the inter-socket bus, but rather a latency and flow control problem.
A more narrow and specific problem is the availability of Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) lanes to service an access controller (e.g., baseband management controller or remote access controller) and a network interface (e.g., a LAN-on-motherboard or LOM) in an information handling system. In a particular generation of processors, two extra lanes per processor may be available. With the two extra lanes in a single socket system, an access controller and network interface can be connected to a processor residing in the socket. However, in a two-socket system, one of these lanes may be partially reserved for processor-to-processor handshaking protocols, leaving only one lane per processor. This forces a system designer to make a choice: connect the network interface to the second processor, or bifurcate a wider bus for this purpose (e.g., a x16 PCIe port). The latter is an unattractive choice because it minimizes one of the advantages of the multi-socket system—more I/O that can be directly connected to the processor. And if the former approach is chosen, a one-processor configuration of the two-socket machine is left without a network interface.